Grocott & Ward, comps. Grocott’s Familiar Quotations, 6th ed. 189-?.
Truth
Magna est veritas, et prevalebit.
Truth is powerful, and she will prevail.
Latin Proverb.
Truth is God’s daughter.
Spanish Proverb.—Quoted by Trench in his Lectures on the Proverbs. Lect. 6.
And all the people then shouted, and said, Great is truth, and mighty above all things.
1 Esdras, Chap. iv. Ver. 41.
Pilate saith unto him, What is truth?
St. John, Chap. xviii. Ver. 38.
But what is truth? ’Twas Pilate’s question put
To Truth itself, that deign’d him no reply.
Cowper.—The Task, Book III. Line 270.
Time shall approve the truth.
Dryden.—The Æneid, Book VIII. (The Vision.)
Truth is brought to light by time.
Tacitus.—from Ramage, Pa. 383.
Truth is truth
To the end of reckoning.
Shakespeare.—Measure for Measure, Act V. Scene 1. (Isabel to the Duke.)
Princes, like beauties, from their youth
Are strangers to the voice of truth.
Gay.—Fable I. Line 5.
I hope there be truths.
Shakespeare.—Measure for Measure, Act II. Scene 1. (Clown to Moth.)
Tell truth, and shame the devil.
Swift.—Mary to Dr. Sheridan; Shakespeare.—King Henry IV., Part I. Act III. Scene 1.
’Tis strange, but true; for truth is always strange;
Stranger than fiction.
Byron.—Don Juan, Canto XIV. Stanza 101.
Truth and fiction are so aptly mix’d
That all seems uniform, and of a piece.
Roscommon.—Horace’s Art of Poetry.
When fiction rises pleasing to the eye,
Men will believe, because they love the lie;
But truth herself, if clouded with a frown,
Must have some solemn proof to pass her down.
Churchill.—Epi. to Hogarth, Line 291.
No words suffice the secret soul to show,
For truth denies all eloquence to woe.
Byron.—The Corsair, Canto III. Stanza 22.
Where love in all its glory shines,
And truth is drawn in fairest lines.
Dr. Beddome.—A Hymn, Verse 1.
How sweet the words of truth, breathed from the lips of love!
Beattie.—The Minstrel, Book II. Verse 53; Line last.
For truth has such a face and such a mien,
As to be loved needs only to be seen.
Dryden.—The Hind and Panther, Part I. Line 33.
Truth, in sunny vest array’d.
Collins.—Ode on the Poetical Character.
Truths divine came mended from that tongue.
Pope.—Eloisa to Abelard, Line 66.
Still list’ning to his tuneful tongue,
The truths which angels might have sung;
Divine impress’d their gentle sway
And sweetly stole my soul away.
Vanessa.—Ode to Spring. (Roscoe’s Life of Swift.)
Truth is unwelcome, however divine.
Cowper.—The Flatting Mill, Verse 6.
The dignity of truth is lost
With much protesting.
Ben Jonson.—Catiline, Act III. Scene 2.
Truth is sunk in the deep.
Yonge’s Cicero.—Academical Quest., Page 20, quoting Democritus.
Truth to her old cavern fled.
Pope.—The Dunciad, Book IV. Line 641.
The sages say, dame Truth delights to dwell,
Strange mansion! in the bottom of a well.
Dr. Wolcott.—Birth-day Ode.